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Samuel Vaisrub, MD

JAMA. 1975;231(13):1370-1371.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

"Who is it, friend or enema?"—a stale pun with which a patient supposedly greeted a hospital orderly—hardly elevates puns from their assigned low rank in the humor hierarchy. It does, however, have a ring of truth. There are occasions when an enema may become an enemy. It can cause untoward complications, even endanger health.

Aside from occasional reactions caused by medicated or hypertonic enemas in the elderly and the debilitated, and transient bacteremias, which are of little clinical importance, most complications are associated with the barium enema.

The best known of these complications is perforation of the bowel, which may be complete or partial. The former usually occurs during a preoperative cleansing enema or during a barium-enema study. The perforation site may be as high as 5 cm (2 inches) above the appendix.¹

Incomplete perforations occur when a mucosal rupture allows barium to dissect into the bowel wall. In . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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